Danielle Steel: Journey

“Why do men always say things like that about abused women? What if I had told you she had hit him with a golf club? Would you believe me? Or would you tell me that fat bastard was lying about it?”

“I'd probably believe him, I'm sorry to say. Because men don't lie about things like that. It's pretty unusual when a man is abused by a woman.”

“Women don't lie either. But people like you, and my husband, make them feel like it's their fault, and they have to keep it a secret. And yes, she was in a mental hospital, but she doesn't look crazy to me, and those bruises were no figment of her imagination. She's terrified of him. I've always heard he was a son of a bitch to his staff, but I never knew he was an abuser.” She had never spoken openly about her past to Greg. Like other women in the same situation, she felt it was somehow her fault, and kept it a dark secret. “I told her I'd help her find a safe house. Any ideas where I start?”

“What about the Coalition for Women? I have a friend who runs it. And I'm sorry about what I said. I should know better.” He looked contrite as he said it.

“Yeah, you should. But thanks, I'll call her.” He jotted down a name for her, and Maddy glanced at it. Fernanda Lopez. She vaguely remembered doing a story about her when she first came to the network. It had been a good five or six years before, but she remembered being impressed by her. But when Maddy called from her own office, they told her Ms. Lopez was on sabbatical, and her replacement had just left on maternity leave. The new woman in charge wasn't coming in for two more weeks, and they'd have her call as soon as she got there. They gave Maddy a few names to call when she told them what she wanted. She tried but the numbers were all answered by answering machines, and when she called the Abused Women's Hotline, it was busy. She'd have to call back later. And then she got busy with Greg, and forgot about it until she went on the air at five o'clock, and promised herself she'd try again in the morning. If Janet had lived with it this long, she would certainly survive until the next morning, but Maddy did want to do something about it. It was obvious that Janet was too paralyzed by fear to help herself, which wasn't unusual either.

When Greg and Maddy went on the air at five, they covered the usual assortment of local, political, national, and international stories, and a plane crash at JFK ate up most of the seven-thirty

She went home in Jack's car alone that night, he had another meeting with the President, and she couldn't help wondering what was keeping them both so busy. But she was thinking of Janet again when she got home, and wondered if she should call her. But Maddy was afraid that Paul might be listening to Janet's calls and decided not to.

Maddy read a stack of articles she'd been meaning to get to, and skimmed through a new book about the latest state of the art techniques in dealing with breast cancer, to see if she wanted to interview the author as part of a news story. She did her nails, and went to bed early. And she heard Jack come in around midnight. But she was too tired to talk to him, and she fell back to sleep before he could join her. It was morning before she woke again, and she heard him walk into his bathroom and turn on the shower.

He was in the kitchen reading The Wall Street Journal when she came downstairs, and he looked up at her with a smile. She was wearing jeans, a red sweater, and bright red Gucci loafers. She looked fresh and young and sexy.

“You make me sorry I didn't wake you last night,” he said with a smile, and she laughed at him, as she poured herself a cup of coffee and picked up the paper.

“You and the President must be up to some real mischief these days, with all those meetings. It better turn out to be something more interesting than a cabinet reshuffle.”

“Maybe so,” he said noncommittally as they both turned back to their papers, and suddenly he heard Maddy gasp and glanced over at her. “What is it?” She couldn't speak for a moment as tears filled her eyes and she continued to try to read the article, but she was blinded by tears as she turned to her husband.

“Janet McCutchins committed suicide last night. She slashed her wrists in their house in Georgetown, one of her children found her and called 911, but she was already dead when they got there. They said she had bruises on her arms and legs, and they feared foul play initially, but her husband explained that she had fallen down the stairs the night before, over one of her son's skateboards. The son of a bitch … he killed her….” She sounded choked and nearly breathless and she could feel her whole body tense as she thought about it.

“He didn't kill her, Maddy,” Jack said quietly “she killed herself. You said so.”

“She thought she didn't have any other way out,” Maddy said in a strangled voice, remembering the feeling all too vividly as she looked at her husband. “I could have done the same thing, if you hadn't gotten me out of Knoxville.”

“That's bullshit and you know it. You'd have killed him first. She was disturbed, she had a history of mental problems. There were probably plenty of other reasons for her to do it.”

“How the hell can you say that? Why don't you want to believe that that fat bastard abused her? Is that so incredible? Does he look all that nice to you? Why isn't it possible she was telling the truth? Because she's a woman?”

It made her furious listening to him, and even Greg had doubted the story when she told him. “Why is the woman always lying?”

“Maybe she wasn't. But the fact that she killed herself supports the theory that she was unbalanced.”

“It supports the theory that she thought she had no other way out and she was desperate. Desperate enough to leave her kids motherless, and even risk having one of them find her.” She was crying openly as she spoke to him, and her breath was coming in little staccato gasps of terror. She knew what it felt like to be so tortured, so terrified, so cornered that there seemed to be no escape route. If she hadn't been young and beautiful and Jack hadn't wanted her for the network, she might easily have met the same fate as Janet McCutchins. And she wasn't so sure Jack was right that she would have killed Bobby Joe first. She had thought of suicide herself, more than once, on dark nights when he was drunk and her lips and eyes were swollen from his latest acts of vengeance. It was all too easy to understand what Janet had been feeling. And then she remembered the calls she had made the day before, on her behalf, from her office. “I called the Coalition for Women for her yesterday, and a hotline. Shit, I wish I had called her last night. But I was afraid to, I was afraid Paul would intercept the call and I'd get her in trouble.”

“She was beyond your help, Mad. Don't beat yourself up over it. This proves it.”

“This proves nothing, goddammit, Jack. She wasn't crazy. She was terrified. And how do you know where he was, or what he had done to her before she did it?”

“He's an asshole, not a murderer. I'd stake my life on it,” he said calmly, as Maddy got ever more heated about it.

“Since when are you two such big pals? How the hell do you know what he did to her? You have no concept what that's like.” She was shaking with sobs as she sat at their kitchen table and cried for a woman she scarcely knew, but she had once walked the same path she had, and she knew that she was one of the fortunate survivors. Janet hadn't been as lucky.

“I do know what it's like,” he said quietly. “When I married you, you had terrible nightmares, and you slept in the fetal position with your arms over your head. I know, baby, I know … I saved you….”

“I know you did,” she said, blowing her nose, and looking at him sadly, “I never forget that…. I just feel so sorry for her…. Think of how she must have felt when she did it. Her life must have been an agony of terror.”